Sum 41’s Deryck Whibley: ‘I was so out of it – drinking wasn’t even a thought’

Look around and you’ll see, the Noughties are back. The eyebrow piercings. The cargo shorts. The frosted tips. Is that the familiar scent of ammonia from Manic Panic hair dye in the air? There are few musical genres as emblematic of that time as pop-punk, and fewer bands embody its insouciance as effectively as Sum 41. “It was always about having fun for us,” says frontman Deryck Whibley. “Everything was done for the fun of it.”

Twenty-one years later and little has changed – on stage, at least. Tonight, as the band close their world tour with a sold-out show at Alexandra Palace, having fun is all that’s on anyone’s mind. Everyone in the crowd is at least a decade out of their teens – the piercing holes have closed over and the band tees fit a little snug now – but adolescent angst is forever. “Don’t tell us to behave/ I’m sick of always hearing ‘Act your age’!” hollers Whibley as he pogoes around the stage with the vim of someone closer to 16 years than his 42. Ten-thousand people throw up the Sum 41 salute in response: four fingers on one hand, a middle finger on the other.

The first time you heard pop-punk blasting from the stereo in the early Noughties, with its breakneck rhythm and shouty vocals, you felt one of two things: an instant affinity with the spiky-haired delinquents shouting them – or annoyed that your child had such bad taste in music. Lyrics combined a demand to be taken seriously with a conviction to never be; sincerely insincere about everything.

As one of the genre’s most recognisable names, Sum 41 are among the bands surfing its second wave alongside newer artists such as Machine Gun Kelly and Olivia Rodrigo. Blink-182 are reforming. Paramore are back. Sum 41 have a record in the works. Something is in the air. But Whibley owes his renewed interest in the genre less to the whims of a nostalgic music landscape than to those of his teething baby. “Pop-punk is the only music he chills out to,” Whibley explains. He compiled a playlist of everything he loved as a kid: Pennywise, NOFX, Bad Religion. Sum 41 didn’t make the cut. “It would feel weird to include us next to all of this great music,” he says. “It never crossed my mind to play him our stuff.”

The Whibley I meet today is a different man from the singer I’ll see on stage 24 hours later. The boy with a reputation for shooting out of hotel room windows with a BB gun, letting off fire extinguishers indoors, and urinating on anything for a laugh is nowhere to be seen. In his place is a pensive and sober singer on vocal rest. “We probably carried on with those antics a little longer than we should have,” he laughs. “But when you’re in a band... I mean, there’s a reason Tommy Lee is 16 forever.” Whibley’s style hasn’t changed, though. Around his neck is a knot of necklaces; his hair is still a shocking blonde. His emo-style fringe swoops out from under an old-school flat cap. Every finger is stained inexplicably black. There is a wedding band on one, however.

In March, Sum 41 announced that a double album titled Heaven and Hell is on the way. One side will be pop-punk; the other will be metal. The latter is widely seen as a left-turn for the band, but while Sum 41 might be indelibly associated with the reckless pace and petulant lyrics of their early material, Whibley has been writing metal-leaning songs since 2007. It has been 11 years since Sum 41 breezed their way to mainstream stardom with their 2001 debut All Killer No Filler, which Whibley wrote when he was still living at home with his parents. “It was awful,” he says. “They’ve always had jobs where they had to be up at four in the morning, meaning no noise past seven. It’s still that way now.” Whibley would sit in the car with his acoustic guitar and a tape recorder. “The pressure of trying to write an album for a major label with a big budget... Everyone was expecting success.” The album went platinum.

All four members of Sum 41 grew up in Ajax, a suburb outside Toronto. When he was 11, Whibley and his cousin formed a rap duo. They called themselves Powerful Young Hustlers and listened to LL Cool J and NWA. Whibley’s mum gave them a dollar for every performance. He was a skater kid with a boyish face and a delinquent grin. “I look pretty much the same as I did back then.” The only difference is his hair. “Everyone in eighth grade wanted to look like Kurt Cobain. When we lost him there was this huge void where Nirvana used to be.” For Whibley, punk-rock became the filler. It was through Sex Pistols and Johnny Rotten that he first discovered hair gel.

Whibley started Sum 41 when he was 15. By graduation, he knew he didn’t want to do anything else. “My mom was really on me to go to college, but I didn’t even want to finish high school. I barely passed.” She was terrified Whibley would become “some bum living in her basement trying to make it one day” so they made a deal: either he makes it in two years, or he goes to school. “Nine months later, we got a record deal.” To this day, his mum’s number plate is SUM41RULE. “It’s so embarrassing when I go home to see them, or God forbid I’ve had to borrow their car!” Whibley turns pink. Parental humiliation, it seems, knows no age limit.

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All Killer No Filler was released in March 2001, but it was another five months before Sum 41 would be world famous. They were invited to open MTV’s 20th anniversary show and asked whether they could make it a collaboration. Beastie Boys said no. Slash said no. “But Tommy [Lee] and Rob Halford [from Judas Priest] said yes,” grins Whibley. The performance was a sight to behold: four downhome Canadian boys in shorts and baggy tees, wide-eyed in admiration of their idols. “Halford was a bit more sober and had advice to give. Tommy was like, ‘Let’s do shots.’” The moment meant everything to them. Yes, Noel Gallagher might go on to call Sum 41 the “s***test band” of all time – a quote, by the way, that they used as promotional material for their (very successful) follow-up record – but who cares? Rob Halford of Judas Priest said they were “the next great heavy metal band of the future” on live TV. That was enough validation for a lifetime. The fact “Fat Lip” became an overnight hit also helped.

Overnight, Sum 41 became as famous as pop-punk behemoths Green Day and Blink-182. It was – and is –  a scene undeniably dominated by white dudes. The fact that Sum 41 featured guitarist Dave Baksh, who is of Indo-Guyanese descent, feels somewhat groundbreaking on reflection. “It was never something we thought about,” says Whibley of the group’s (relatively) diverse line-up. “We were just a band of friends that went to school together.” He does recall a running gag, though. “Dave would joke that he was Tony Kanal from No Doubt’s younger brother, because I guess he was the only musician of colour around. People would believe him all the time.”

The sudden fame was disorienting – even if they were having too much fun to notice it themselves. In 2001, they played more than 300 shows alone. “We were exhausted all the time but we were young, so we were drinking and partying a lot. And then when it’s show time, you do a couple of shots, Jack or vodka, and you’re back.” Everything was for the hell of it. Drinking, partying, feuding. “We were bored, so we’d started picking on some band for no reason. We were just f***ing around. We were immature and wanted to start s***. Then we got older – and it got boring,” he smiles. One such band was Simple Plan, who are currently opening for them on tour. “We never actually addressed that,” he laughs.

In 2006, Whibley married pop-punk princess Avril Lavigne, effectively declaring open season for the tabloids. “That felt more intrusive,” he recalls. “It became not about the music; it was my private life and gossip. And it was constant. You can imagine it was overwhelming.” He and Lavigne divorced in 2009, after which things began to fall apart. “Around 2010 and 2011, the band started to implode a little bit. My drinking was bad...” He clarifies. “Everyone’s drinking was bad. It was drunks getting mad at other drunks for drinking too much. There was a lot of resentment and anger. We were at each other’s throats on tour. I don’t really have an addictive personality, but I had drunk so much that my body had become dependent. I couldn’t function without it; I would be shaking and then I’d have a drink and feel normal.”

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Whibley’s addiction became so serious, and his health deteriorated so rapidly, that when he was rushed to hospital in 2013 after collapsing in his kitchen, he was put into an induced coma. He woke up three days later. His liver had failed, and other organs were facing a similar fate. “I almost died,” he says. “The month I was in hospital it was very touch and go.” Staying sober afterwards wasn’t hard, he says, mostly because recovery made everything else look easy. “I had nerve damage in my feet, which felt like I was walking on hot coals or broken glass, or both. It was like that for a year and a half. I was so out of it that I couldn’t form sentences and my motor skills were off. Drinking wasn’t even a thought because it was like, ‘How are we going to get back to normal?’” Eventually, he found a way.

After the show at Alexandra Palace, Whibley comes out to say hello. He is relieved that the tour went as well as it did; he had been nervous about it for a while. “I used to wonder why I still get nerves after so many years, but then I saw this interview with Frank Sinatra,” says Whibley. “He was in his late sixties, and he said he gets nervous every night because he cares – and it all made sense to me. I’m nervous because I care and I want to be great. I used to be able to drink the nerves away, but now, well...” he trails off. Not an hour later, he ducks out of the party. It’s not yet midnight, but he has an early flight to catch. Deryck Whibley, the forever teen of Sum 41, is all grown up.